


Ultimatum

by Caligraphunky



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caligraphunky/pseuds/Caligraphunky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck pisses off the Duke of Detroit big time but runs away in an attempt to protect his friends, he ends up captured by Kane...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Duke Speaks

**Author's Note:**

> It is very possible that I am putting this up as a way to encourage me to continue it. As of now, I could call this my own personal Chinese Democracy...which is complete bullshit but who's checking.
> 
> I'm also posting this because I am moving off of tumblr completely and want my stuff in another place. So sue me.

Chuck could hold a lot of thoughts in his head, even when he was stressed (constantly), worried (always), or freaked out to the point of incoherence (embarrassingly often). He could track rapid and conflicting data on three screens at once while doing trajectory calculations on a fourth and keeping notes with his brain. He could catch which of Kane’s robots were incoming, which were already on the battlefield and which had been neutralized before the smoke had even cleared, and all of this with one single split second glance at a console. He could tell Mike when they were about to be thrown off of something, thrown into something, thrown under something, roasted, toasted, crushed, smushed, zapped, whapped, electrocuted, or demolecularized.

All at speeds of way _way_ too fast.

And right now all that mental energy was being channeled into one thought, one single sentence that pulsed with his heartbeat at the front of his mind in giant letters, that pushed every other thought way into the background and beyond, like the scenery of Motorcity going by in the passenger side of Mutt. It was a thought that was crystallizing on his very being, the one perfect expression of the truth that was consuming him and it bubbled up from his throat before he even knew he was talking.

“I don’t wanna go."

 That was what stress did to him, sent him off talking to himself like a crazy person. He slumped on the bed of his room, staring dejectedly at a pair of pants and they weren’t even one of his good pairs. He plopped them haphazardly into the open backpack beside him, the one that had the stink of storage room and disuse coming out of every torn hole.

He’d had a whole plan for this: The packing (quick), the goodbyes (avoided), the escape (like his pants were on fire) and now it was all being undone by the malaise that seemed to settle over him like a heavy wet blanket following the only thought in his mind, like it was summoned by the world’s worst magic words.

“I don’t wanna go.”

A beep accompanied by the sound of a small motor beside him, and Chuck realized he wasn’t alone in the room. Roth hovered near him, twiddling the “thumbs” on the vaguely formed techo-organic hands that he had folded in front of his chassis. He looked apologetic, sorry to interrupt but curious about what Chuck was talking about.

“I don’t wanna go…tooooooo…Jacob’s for dinner!” Chuck giggled nervously as the end of that sentence stumbled out of his mouth in a warbling chirp. “Yeah…He always makes this awful beansprout and beat top casserole with mustard sauce and it tastes like eating…something nasty…that you wouldn’t understand…” Chuck put his hand behind his head and rubbed his hair nervously, “Because…robots, you know…don’t, uh, eat…”

Ok, so it was a little pathetic…but robots should not be able to feel pity, he thought, much less express it. Roth’s entire frame seemed to sag, tilting this way and that, before patting Chuck awkwardly on the head with a sound that Chuck was pretty sure was meant to be “There, there.” He brushed at Roth with the hand he had on his head, but Roth was floating over to the backpack, making questioning gestures at it.

“It’s just some stuff I’m getting rid of” Chuck exclaimed and stood up to close the backpack, picking up both sides and reaching to zip it up-

“No, no, _no_! It’s not happening, I don’t care who the Duke thinks he is!”

-And reflexively throwing the backpack at Roth in a moment of blind panic.

That was Mike’s voice carrying down through the closed door of his room, and he was definitely riled about something. It wasn’t too unusual for Mike, who felt all the team’s worries, fears, and doubts more strongly than the rest of the Burner’s did, to get worked up when a teammate was  in trouble, but Chuck hadn’t wanted him to know about this. Not this time.

“You tell the Duke that it doesn’t matter _what_ he threatens. The Burners aren’t giving up one of their own now, or ever!” The door slammed, and it was followed immediately by a pounding on his.

“Yo, Chuck!” It was Dutch’s voice. Chuck scrambled to the floor, shoving everything back into the backpack. “We gotta burn rubber! The Duke just came on the wire, out for your head!”

“Chuck, you gotta tell me what you did to the Duke!” That was Texas. Chuck crammed the lid down, falling on it to flatten it. “Only this time we’ll _Texasify_ it so he gets so mad, he’ll want all of Motorcity taken down! Then we can use all of Motorcity to take him down!”

“Chuck, what happened out there?” Julie joined in. Chuck begin the process of trying to shove the backpack under the bed without having to pull the whole thing up like a lid. “What is all this between you and the Duke?”

“Chuck?” Mike. “I’m coming in.” and the door swung open just as Chuck squeezed the case all the way under and popped up from his hiding place.

“Hey!” he called to the Burners in a voice that was way, way too loud. “What’s goin’ on, you guys? Ahahaha, something about the Duke, huh?” He got to his feet. “I wasn’t really, you know, listening too well so-”

“What were you doin’ down there?” Dutch was staring at Chuck like he had a giant spider on his face and it was easily the least weirded-out look Chuck was getting right now.

 “Oh…Oh! I was, uh,” Chuck scanned the floor frantically and his eyes settled on where Roth was lying trying to readjust his stabilizers, “helping Roth!”

The sound Roth made indicated that every calculation he’d just made had been ruined by Chuck when he picked him up and held him out. The little robot knocked on the side of his frame with his fist, checking to see if anything came loose.

“He seemed pretty unstable this morning sooooo,” Chuck lied, nervously grinning, “I figured I’d help the little guy out. First test flight didn’t go so hot buuuuuut we’re working on it!”

The strange looks got stranger, and Chuck could tell that they hadn’t bought a word of it.

“Chuck, buddy, are you OK?” Mike stepped towards him in concern and Chuck felt his stomach lurch. “You’re acting…weird.”

The twitchy nervous giggle that Chuck let out did not do anything to alleviate Mike’s suspicions, and he mentally cursed that particular habit of his.

“I, ah, no! No, nothing’s wrong just…wound up today! That’s all!” He let go of Roth, who floated uneasily to the rest of the Burners, shooting Chuck looks dirtier than a robot without a face should be able to shoot. Chuck cleared his throat and clasped his hands together. “So…you said something about the Duke?”

Julie flipped open a small device and a holographic image as tall as the ceiling bathed the room in a sickly orange glow. It displayed Chuck’s face, in what had to be the least flattering shot the Duke could have gotten his hands on. He looked for all of Motorcity like a deranged sewer rat with its most sensitive parts caught in a car door. Underneath read simply “WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. UNLIMITED USE OF ANY JUNKYARD IN MOTORCITY FOR THE CAPTURE OF CHUCK. SEE THAT MONKEY ON THE FLOOR AND YOU’LL GET YOUR REWARD”

 Chuck didn’t even notice Roth flying past him and behind the bed, probably because his knees had given out from under him and Roth had sailed over his head.

“What _happened_?” Mike was using his leader voice, a unique mix of concern and urgency, compassion and demand. It was the voice he used when he needed something out of the other Burners. Chuck, like the rest of his team, found the voice impossible to say no to.

And as he was trying to find a way to say no, Roth ended the argument with a loud thump as he yanked the backpack out from under the bed. The weight of the bag put him off balance and left him swinging in the air precariously, until one of his arms lost its grip and all the wrinkled clothes fell over over Chuck’s head.

“Look…guys, I…I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Chuck’s voice was wavering and he talking too fast. “I don’t even know what I was thinking! I don’t even really know what _happened_! One minute the Duke was talking to me over the communications screen and the next he was just…I’ve never heard someone so _angry_! I heard smashing and him yelling and…and andandand I _don’t even know what I_ _did_!”

He was half-screaming at this point, or maybe, he realized, was full on screaming because his voice was going hoarse. No, it wasn’t going hoarse, it was just that Chuck was trying to talk around a lump in his throat.

“He gave me an ultimatum,” he managed to squeak out, “Get out of Motorcity or he steamrolls the Burners like a snack cake under one of his limos.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Julie exclaimed, “Where does he think you’re going to go?”

“I think he figured Chuck could think of that himself –OW!” Texas rubbed his arm where Dutch jabbed it with his elbow.

“C’mon, Chuck? You were actually gonna just run away?!” Dutch shook his head in exasperation. “The Duke’s no threat to all of us…but he might squash you on your own.” There was good humor in his voice, but he wasn’t joking. Roth hovered by his head, doing the robot equivalent of nodding in agreement.

Mike knelt down and offered Chuck his hand, pulling him up to his feet…which were still wobbling from the shaking in his knees, but their leader seemed to consider it at least a start.

“Chuck, you aren’t going anywhere. We’re Burners, we all stick together, remember? Whatever this is, we’re gonna fight for you with everything we’ve got.” Mike draped his arm around Chuck’s shoulders and his arm swept towards Dutch, Texas, and Julie. “Right, guys?”

As the others cheered and whooped, pumping their fists in spirit, and Mike gave Chuck a reassuring smile and thumbs up, Chuck gave his friends the biggest grin he could muster.

Mostly because he was pretty sure that if he tried to say anything, he’d throw up.

That night was the longest Chuck ever stayed up through. Sleep was impossible and he found that it was just him alone with his still-racing thoughts.

He knew they were right, of course. That the Burners would stick together no matter what. That his friends would do anything to protect him, that they’d always have his back. They wouldn’t turn him over to the Duke, no matter what the cost.

That really was the problem.

He kept flashing back to what the Duke had done (lost his mind), what he had said (unrepeatable), and what he had threatened (severe harm to everyone Chuck cared about in Motorcity). The others had been dismissive, but the Duke had the means to do just about anything he wanted to anyone he wanted to do it to.

There really only was one solution. The gang could manage without him for awhile, right? Julie could take care of any computer stuff that came up, Dutch was already a mechanical genius, Texas…didn’t do anything Chuck could do, and Mike could probably stand to have some time riding solo without Chuck screaming in his ear on every turn.

Chuck slung his backpack by his door, sitting down at a computer screen. A new window popped up, the word _RECORDING_ blinking in the corner.

“Sorry guys, I…” that was as far as Chuck could get without choking up. He glanced around to avoid looking at the camera and his eyes settled on a pile of papers Dutch had left on the counter.

A few minutes later, Chuck slung the bag over his back, and eased the door closed after him as he left, the note he had taped there fluttering as he did:

_Guys,_

_Sorry I’m such a coward._

_-Chuck._

Time to start walking.


	2. Where the Hell Is Chuck?

Noise control in Motorcity had always been out of the question. The city was too sparse to be bothered, and the twisty, curvy roads  practically invitations to squeal the tires and rev the engines at every opportunity. There was no stretch of road that didn’t include giant loops or dime-turn corkscrews or the simple but frequent huge jump, all of them accompanied by the roars and rattles of cars and whoops of the drivers.

And yet Mike found himself trying to be as quiet as possible as he drove along the convoluted interstate, taking turns more carefully, trying not to rev the engines, being quiet, making no more noise with his car than he absolutely couldn’t avoid. He was listening -though he would never admit to Chuck that it was this particular sound he was craning to hear- for the familiar screaming that always accompanied a drive.

The communications channels the Burners used in their cars were also dead, and it was a quiet that Mike found unsettling. His best guess right now was there just wasn’t anything to report, though it was taking all his willpower not to call up his team and ask if they’d seen anything.

For the third time in twenty minutes.

He settled to the back of the driver’s seat, tapping his fingers against the wheel and stealing glances out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of…honestly, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. The roads were too high to see one person in the dim streets and endless pitch-black buildings that made up Motorcity.

Mindlessly drumming on the steering wheel only proved a distraction when Mike became aware of it, but all he could do was mentally chide himself for losing his focus. He turned his attention back to the search, only to start drumming his fingers on the wheel again, which in-turn distracted him. This went on for another cycle and a half before Mike caught himself mid-drum.

With a frustrated sigh, he reached for Mutt’s com link but was cut off with his finger a fifth of an inch away from the button by the concerned face of Julie’s cat-eared avatar.

“Any sign of him?”

“Not since the last time I called in,” Mike’s quiet voice surprised even him, and Julie’s square face fell even farther. “I don’t understand…he knows we’d have his back no matter what the Duke throws at us!”

 He reached up to wipe sweat off his brow. “Now he’s out there, alone and…Motorcity is way too dangerous to be out there alone! What if the Duke has already found him, or what if he ran into some Kanebots or-”

“Motorcity’s a huge place, Mike,“ Julie insisted, cutting him off. “The odds are _way_ against the Duke finding him, and we’d know if there were any Kanebots. Three days is plenty of time to get away from danger-” Julie caught her mistake but it was too late.

“Three days is plenty of time to get hurt, Julie! Or get captured. Or worse! Three days is plenty of time to contact us too, but he hasn’t done that! Three days is plenty of time to find him, and _we_ haven’t done _that_ either!”

“Mike, calm down-”

“Chuck is in danger, Julie, I can’t calm down! We’re Burners, we’re supposed to look after our own, and we’re not resting until we bring him home.”

“Mike, I _agree_ , OK? I’m scared for him too! We’re _all_ scared! But this isn’t _working_. We can’t just drive around Motorcity and hope we run into him! We’re no closer to finding Chuck then we were two days ago!”

There was silence in both cars. Mike sagged back in his seat and Julie’s virtual eyes focused straight at his real ones.

“We’ll bring Chuck home, Mike, I promise. But we need a _lead_ , and with the Duke not talking it’s gonna be hard to get one. ”

 After a few moments, he managed a smirk, weak and forced though it was.

“…’Hope we run into him?’”

Her avatar’s eyes broke their lock and darted around in confusion for a moment before she gasped.

“…Oh…Oh! Sorry Mike, I didn’t mean…well, I- you know what I meant!”

That got a weak chuckle - _geeze_ \- out of Mike.

“Point still stands, though,” Julie said, smiling a little.

“Right.” Mike was drumming on the steering wheel again. “OK…let’s…let’s just get back to Jacob’s and regroup. Maybe Dutch and Texas know something.”

“Sorry, Mike, I have to beg off,” her voice was laced with guilt, “my boss won’t quit bugging me about some new project he wants me to work on. I’ve missed about as much time as I can get away with.”

“It’s OK,” he smiled at her, completely missing the pause between “my” and “boss”  “you do”

The first thing Mike saw when he pulled up into the Burner’s base was Stronghorn, parked at an odd angle with the top popped open. Parking beside Texas’ car revealed Texas, who right up to the point where Mutt’s engine cut out, had been pacing back and forth beside his ride. Mike didn’t even open the door before he jumped over Stronghorn’s hood.

“Mike, you’re just in time. Texas has got the answer to all our problems, check it out: First, we gotta build the tallest towers that anyone’s every built in all four corners of Motorcity, tall, like mega tall, so tall we can touch the ceiling. Think about it. That’s taller than ANYONE has ever been! Second, we gotta all go up there and watch for our Little Buddy with our super-enhanced Bioncu-Scopes that we’re gonna get Dutch to build and-”

Mike let the little “Listening to Texas Ramble” space in the back of his brain do its job while he jogged up the stairs to Dutch, hunched over the table which was absolutely covered in scratched-out and crumpled up blue-prints.

“Has he been bugging you, man?” Mike’s tone was that of someone who would wrestle Texas into his car if it meant Dutch could get some work done.

“For once? No,” Dutch’s eyes had bags under them, and Mike wondered briefly about how his own might look considering how long he’d been out, “Actually, listening to him has kept my mind off other stuff.”

“Any luck?” It was more of a formality then anything. The mess on the table didn’t seem like luck, nor did the fact that Texas still felt the need to come up with plans, which, as far as Mike could tell, had moved on to the backup plan of digging elaborate underground tunnels and super-enhanced vibration sensors to detect Chuck’s footprints. All courtesy of Dutch.

“Sorry, Mike. I got nothing,” the taller boy collapsed with his head in his hands, before gesturing to the pile of paper on the table. “Chuck has blocked his signal but _good_ and I can’t make our receivers strong enough to pick up whatever trickle’s still coming out.”

“So…what you’re saying is, we’re out of options until Chuck calls us,” Mike slumped back and stretched out in the booth, worry written all over his face. Dutch very carefully didn’t amend Mike’s sentence with ‘ _if he ever does_.’

Texas was not so careful.

He was still talking as he came up the stairs to join his friends at the table. “Aw, c’mon you guys! We can’t wait around for Chuck! He’s probably thinking the Duke is gonna tap into his system and track him down, so he’s not gonna call and if he falls into a giant pit with a bunch of giant kanebot tigers or something he won’t have any time to-YOW!”

Dutch was just tall enough to reach Texas’ foot from underneath the table, and more then strong enough to slam his heel into Texas’ toe hard enough to hurt.

He hadn’t, however, been able to grab Mike before he scrambled out of the booth, slurring something like “Igottageouthere,” and dashing down the steps, taking them three at a time. Dutch had just managed to get out of the booth himself, a little tangled from the stretch of stomping Texas’ foot, when he heard Mutt’s engine roar to life.

“Why’d you step on my foot?” Texas shot Dutch a betrayed glare.

“Why’d _you_ say that to Mike?” Dutch grabbed Texas by the shoulder and pulled him towards their cars.

“’Cause I was right.”

“Well…you…Alright, fine, _yeah_ , but you didn’t have to tell Mike!”

“We better go find him,” Texas said, in what Dutch filed as a rare moment of lucidity.

“Right…Better call Julie too. Let her know Mike’s not in his right mind.” Dutch half-jumped into Whiptail’s cockpit.

Texas shrugged as he climbed into Stronghorn. “She might already know. Mike gets kinda crazy when he’s worried. When he’s not worried too, but he goes really nuts when he gets scared!”

And up in Deluxe, Julie did indeed already know. And if it wasn’t about that, then whatever Dutch was calling about would need to wait at least until she was in an area less populated with KaneCo personnel. Even the elevator up to her pod was a little too risky.

Even the _1 Urgent Message_ note that greeted her on her KaneCo terminal seemed a little iffy, but that, she had to assume, was a fine blend of paranoia and fear talking.

She pulled up the note, and found herself with a screen-full of her dad. He was absolutely exuberant on the still as the message waited for her to hit play, and the mix started to be overpowered with fear. When her dad was happy, it usually meant that somebody in Motorcity was not.

Often it meant a lot of unhappy someones in Motorcity.

She bit her lip, took a breath, and hit play.

“Julie!” her father was beside himself with glee, more  animated than usual, as close to dancing around his office as he ever got, “Listen honey, I don’t have a lot of time, but when you get this message -Hehehe- when you get this message, come up and meet me in my office! We’re celebrating, honey!”

The screen flickered away, and came up with security camera footage of a Motorcity junkyard. Julie didn’t recognize it, but by the way the paneling in the background curved, she could guess it was somewhere by the outskirts.

Her dad’s grunts were everywhere, some examining piles of car parts, but the majority of them surrounding some piece of KaneCo machinery that was…upside down in a pit, for some reason.

“What is-” Julie said to herself in confusion, before her eyes widened and her thoughts stopped.

Three Ultra Elites were pulling something out of the pit. An injured Elite, a dazed Tooley…

And, clothes torn and bleeding a little, the limp form of Chuck.

The screen cut back to Abraham.

“We did it honey! That’s a genuine Burner right there! Anyway, I’ll see you in a few. Love you, Julie!” And the screen flickered off.

Julie sat there for a few moments, just breathing, trying not to freak out. She didn’t freak out. She was calm in the clutch.

She really hoped she could keep Mike the same way.

Time to see what Dutch thought.


	3. How to Catch a Burner (If You’re Not Careful)

And half a day earlier…

A long, plump rat stretched out from its cozy nest of burger wrappers and chewed up car interior to take in the glory of its squalled little home at the bottom of a junkyard. The motor oil dripped from the cracked and rusted engine just so, glinting like gold in what little artificial light could be found so close to the edges of Motorcity. The rat yawned, all four sides of its mouth split like a blossoming flower, before it scampered over to preen its scabs to a perfect shine in the dripping liquid.

It dragged its paw down its ear and when the ear popped back up again, the rat suddenly heard a snarling sound, high and sudden, the roar of an angry predator. There was no time for anything but instinct and that instinct was to hide, to find darkness. To go _up._ Find shelter. Scale the mountain of junked-out cars and hide under the dashboard until it was safe again.

The rat scrambled to the top of the pile, taking foothold on the jagged squashed metal of the cars. It clambered into the front seat of the vehicle that crowned the pile and found itself face to face with the rumbling monster, the one making noise that drove it into the darkness.

But this was not a monster. It was one of the two legged animals that occasionally came to the junkyard to take things. It was asleep, curled in on itself in the front and passenger seat, yellow mane flopped over its face, covered further by its long lanky arms which were pressing its nose together, causing it to make the growling sound.

The rat blinked twice and thought. The human was clearly alive, if quite dirty, and therefore not suitable to eat, and, though its breath was hot and gusting, it also had no scent on it that would indicate food nearby either. The extent of the rat’s interest in the boy satisfied, it sat back on its haunches to sniff the air.

Another snore seemed imminent when the boy opened his mouth again…but instead of a snore there was an altogether more horrific noise: a blood-curdling scream.

The blonde boy’s shriek of confused terror was choked by a pained-sounding snort of dry sinuses, and the rat bolted, jumping down the pile of cars and heading for darkness, pausing for a moment only to take in the sight of the brand new object looming over its home: A gleaming blue and white crane suspending a dimly glowing drill bit.

The rat regarded it for a moment, decided it was not food, and then ran off to find a place where things weren’t quite so confusing and a little more edible.

And Chuck -who had no idea where he was or how he got there- was more confused then he’d ever been.

He jolted upright and then shrank back as his long limbs, stiff and cramped from the long -he guessed night?-  hunched in the chassis of a junked-out car, all registered painful, popping complaints at once. Chuck uncurled. A little at a time. Slowly unraveling himself, staring at the ripped and moldy ceiling of the car, wondering where, exactly, things had gone so wrong, and trying not to come to the conclusion that he should work from his birth onward.

The only way to pass through the pain in his unraveling joints and avoid his own thoughts turning on him was to consider the plan…Right, the plan. There had been a plan, at one point. And it had involved more than just running away as fast as he could.

A little at a time.

The plan had come together in Chuck’s head as he hoofed the length of Motorcity, formed in between the dangers encountered therein, like the pack of mutant dogs that chased him up a fire escape, or the Mamma’s Boys that sent him hiding in a trash can, or the bandit that kept him hiding in an abandoned Coupe for three hours, or the roving mutant rats, or the Electroblade that nearly caught him, or that other bandit, or the Duke’s personal flunkies constantly tearing down the road to look for him or the…the…

That wasn’t a little at a time. That was Chuck’s stupid brain trying to tackle everything at once like it always did, and he couldn’t even make himself bring up the map because he just knew that he wasn’t anywhere near the route he’d plotted out.

 _I’m such a coward_. The thought crept into his brain and stuck there like a burr. It was so tempting to curl back up in the driver’s seat and nip the bud of his sore joints by never moving again, letting the car rust away with him in it, and the whole world forget about him.

This wasn’t helping and Chuck could feel the bottom drop out of his stomach when he realized the plan he had wasn’t a “plan” so much as a vague collection of half-completed thoughts smashed into the slightest semblance of order like a man in a hurry to organize things before he was killed and that was not at all a metaphor. Not even a little bit. He had picked enough non-metaphorical trash out of his shoes to prove it.

OK, he had…left the Burner’s garage. That was step one and it was taken care of. Step two had been blocking his signal so that his friends couldn’t track him. Also done, though it involved a lot more sniffling and tear-blurred vision and trembling hands then he’d felt strictly necessary. Now he was on Step three.

Step three. Get to the outskirts of Motorcity.

Folding himself over like a somersault was kidding was the only way to get on all fours and crawl to the car’s windows and pushing his bangs out of his eyes was the only way to tell that…uh, that his vision was still a little too blurred with sleep and darkness to make out much detail. Still, the way the lights seemed to contour downward told him that he was, in fact, right on the edge of the dome covering Motorcity. Step three was done. Now onto step four, and what a step it was.

Step four. Get outside Detroit somehow and hope that nothing killed him before the Duke of Detroit decided that he wasn’t worth killing.

Organization. Right. Nothing about Chuck’s thoughts had been about pulling together a plan, he realized now with not a little amount of panic squeezing at his chest. Putting his affairs in order was more like it. All he needed was a good Last Known Photograph and he’d be all set to disappear forever. The Vanishing Idiot Coward. They might even include it in a footnote in the history of Motorcity.

Chuck swallowed hard, half because of the hard burning lump forming in his throat and half because he hadn’t had anything to drink for a day and a half. Looking through his pack –where was his pack?! Oh, on the passenger seat, as a makeshift pillow-for the solution to one only intensified the thoughts of the other.

This was all for the Burners. For his friends. That was the most important thing to remember right now. He had to leave so that Duke didn’t hurt them, even if what he had threatened to do had gone straight into cartoonish violence at around the same time the Duke’s face turned the color of his tracksuit. He knew none of those threats had been empty, even if about two-thirds of them had been impossible.

It was all Chuck’s fault, but he couldn’t imagine letting any of his friends pay the price. Maybe, he thought, this was how Mike felt all the time.

It felt pretty awful. What’s more, it made Chuck feel worse about running away which, up to that point, he was sure hadn’t been possible. But, somehow, the knowledge that Mike was somewhere in Motorcity feeling the way Chuck was feeling right now and that he had caused that feeling just made him want to dangle himself out the car window and hope a pile of scrap fell into him so some sheet metal could scissor his head off.

The driver side door was rusted shut, and the passenger side was going to be a difficult climb down. Chuck had lost the sleep-deprived fear-enhanced delirium that had driven him to climb up in the first place, but he wasn’t actually that high up. All climbing would really require was a steady hand and some firm footholds. Chuck carefully slid out of the car, planting his feet in one of the gaps provided by the crumpled steel, and set to turning around so he could start his decent.

His decent was completed by the ear-piercing sound of metal banging against metal that snapped his entire nervous system into turbo drive, which really only meant that he let go of the car’s upholstery in a flailing panic and fell heavily backward into the wet oily mud below.

Chuck lay there, soaking in whatever stew of car fluids had seeped into the ground, when he became aware of voices echoing over his own gasping breaths.

“ _Tooley_!”

“Sorry, Mistuh Kane! These controls are kinda fid’ly…”

Tooley. Mr. Kane.

_Abraham Kane and his strongest hired goon._

And there was Chuck, practically close enough to throw spitballs at them.

This had to be some kind of record. No, curse. It was a curse. Statistics had thrown up its hands and said “I dunno, you tell me.” It was simply not possible that Chuck could have accrued the kind of bad luck needed to run straight into his worst enemy while trying to escape his slightly-less-worse enemy.

_Better enemy?_

No, that sounded stupid.

Chuck managed to force his thoughts back to the situation at hand before they were allowed to run away, though he couldn’t blame them for the impulse. He wanted to do the exact same thing.

“Tooley, it goes _up_ and it goes _down_. A monkey could do this, and do it _without_ swinging. So why don’t _you_ just leave it alone?”

Standing up after a fall, Chuck found, is much easier when it’s driven by the knowledge that you may have to run for your life at any point. He really should have run. Just follow the edge of Detroit’s dome until he found an exit. Scramble his signal and radio it in to the others when he was safe and let them take care of it while he took care of the Duke problem.

“So what should I do, Mistuh Kane?”

Instead, Chuck planted his back against the side of the nearest stack of junked out cars, and edged his way along, peering out from behind before bolting (scrambling) to the next one and hunching behind it like somebody tried to fold up a doll made of too much paper. Chuck glanced upward to

“Make perimeter checks every ten minutes _like I told you!_ Maybe go investigate that scream?”

Scream? What scream? Chuck hadn’t heard a-

When he woke up. Chuck had screamed when he woke up. He’d given himself away before he was conscious. He might as well have called Kane on the phone and asked for a ride.

He was way too close. Those guys would spot him almost immediately if he stayed here. What he even thinking trying to go over there in the first place, he’d never know, but he clearly wasn’t going to succeed in anything but putting himself in more danger.

  _I’m a coward and I’m an idiot_. Might as well admit it so the apparent fight that seemed to be taking place between his two halves could get settled before they got him killed.

 “Take some of the Elites with you, and make it _thorough_. Nobody can know we’re here or they’ll find the rest of the operation, inform the Burners, and we’ll have to scratch the whole project! This is important, Tooley!”

There was a project. Kane was doing some kind of project, down on the very edge of Motorcity, and nobody had noticed…or maybe they had noticed and been “taken care of,” complete with quotes, to ensure that nobody found out.

Chuck could hear other voices, not as loud and unintelligible from his position. There were…three or four other soldiers from what he could tell. He could…maybe get away, still, as long as he was quick and careful.

“But why is it so important? Do you think the Burners might find out?”

“ _Of course they might find out!_ You can never underestimate the Burners…”

Chuck wobbled upright, pushing himself off from the side of the car, only to realize that his feet had sunk ankle-deep in the mud.

“They have their thumb on the pulse of Motorcity! It’s the only way they could know what I’m planning:  by being experts at espionage!”

He was stuck tight in the mud, reduced to a jerking pelvic shimmy to free his trapped feet.

“The Burners could have anybody in this city watching this place! Who knows what mad genius they could have hired to watch this place…”

Chuck finally managed to drag his left foot out with a slimy squelch, shoe remaining somewhere in the mire, probably to be preserved for future generations to marvel at.

“We can’t afford to take any risks down here! And that means we can’t leave our…work area unguarded.”

There was no way to put his foot back down without having it sink again, so he floundered, trying to prop his liberated foot up on a car only to lose his footing and topple. For the second time in ten minutes, Chuck splashed backwards into the mud.

Everything went quiet for a few long moments before another voice, which must have belonged to one of the Elites, piped up. “I _knew_ I heard a splash! C’mon!”

Chuck’s heart skipped and panic tightened into a death grip on his chest. He could hear splashing footsteps, Kane’s goons running over to the source of the sound. Slipping and sliding was no longer an option, and yet he was having trouble getting his skinny limbs to do anything else. Every attempt to gain traction brought a face-full of mud as he flipped around to crawl.

The splashing was coming in fits and starts, as the Ultra Elites stopped to poke their heads around the junkyard’s maze, and Chuck couldn’t keep the terrified squeaks in his throat. Getting caught was a certainty now, unless…

Unless he went up. To the darkness. To hide.

Getting a grip on the pile of cars was difficult, and Chuck was sure he’d cut his hand on the frame of the bottom car’s window, but adrenaline and fear took over and he scaled the line of cars just as one of the Elites rounded the corner.

Chuck tried to get himself under control, breathing deep through his nose and back out through…his nose, as he’d clamped his hand over his mouth to muffle the involuntary noises that he didn’t seem to be able to stop. From the dark interior of the car, Chuck could see the top of the crane and he tentatively leaned out to get a better look.

A huge drill, lined with red heat coils probably to cut through steel and dry out mud to keep the hole from caving in- was suspended by a thick cable and held aloft by a baby blue crane. Under the crane was Kane’s right hand, Tooley, scratching his head and looking miffed.

“Aww, but goin’ to look was MY job! Where’d they go?” he said aloud, disappointed.

Chuck could hear voices from the other side of the car, talking about the…trail of mud up one of the sides oh no oh no _oh no no no no…_

Chuck was an idiot, and he was a coward, but he was going to make at least one of those things work for him.

He could just reach the next stack of cars if he stretched with all his might, but the sound of clanging footsteps coming up behind him inciting nothing less than a leap. It caught his stomach on a plastic lever on the seat and he banged his knee on a frame, but he made the jump. He _made_ the _jump!_ He wasn’t going to die!

In this moment. The acid in his gut took over just as quickly as it receded and he yanked his body up to crawl through the next doorless car.

“HEY!”

The Elite’s shout made Chuck yelp in fear and the jump came blind, panic driving him straight through to the other side.

But there was nothing to grab except the cable of the KaneCo crane.

His hands burned as he snagged the cable, and he wasn’t heavy enough to make the drill swing. His body snapped painfully to the side, but he gripped the cable with all his might and stopped himself, dangling from it like a monkey on a vine.

The slick mud that clung to his hands made keeping that grip difficult. “Don’t let go…Don’t let go… _Please_ don’t let go…” It was a mantra, sobbed out in a state beyond panic.

“Let go’a what?” Tooley couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from, judging from the way he whipped around in a circle. And then he looked up.

“HEY! Get offa there!” He yanked the control lever down, and the drill plummeted to the ground, into the hole it had drilled earlier, down straight into the darkness.

Chuck felt like he was falling, plummeting into the abyss. The only way to get out was to climb as fast as he could along the descending cable, long limbs straining to go fast enough to keep himself up as high as possible. Deep below, the drill bit hit the ground with a muted thud, and Chuck slid a few inches down the cable, leaving behind deep red streaks to go with the greenish-brown mud.

“If you ain’t comin’ down from there, I’m gonna go up to MAKE you!” Tooley was true to his word, hopping on the cable, and beginning the climb. There was a groan from somewhere, and Chuck thought, as he tried to unclench his aching hands enough to climb up, that it came from himself…

No…No, it was coming from the _crane_.

KaneCo stuff was strong enough to hold them both. It had to be.

Chuck kicked out when Tooley grabbed for his leg, failing to notice that the Ultra Elites from before, as well as the ones who had fanned out into other areas, had negotiated their way to the crane, drawn by the commotion.

It didn’t go unnoticed by Tooley. “Help me get th’ guy! He’s bein’ oof-” Chuck kicked him the jaw, “he’s bein’ difficult!”

Two KaneCo Ultra Elites jumped from their vantage point onto the cable and slid down.

Three others  leapt onto the cable from below and climbed up.

Chuck was right and then some: the crane was more than strong enough to hold seven people.

The anchors in the ground that held it in place, however, were not.

And as the crane toppled over, the last thing Chuck remembered before everything went black was five KaneCo agents exchanging slow-burning glances, all realizing in unison that they’d made a big mistake.

And at the same time, miles away from there…

A glowing red holo screen sat in front of a golden throne, displaying the events at the same time as they happened.

The little blondie had apparently forgotten that there wasn’t a scrapyard in Motorcity that he could hide in. They were all his territory, and he monitored every one, no matter how far away they were.

But this development was new. It was new and he had no plans for it.

As the Duke of Detroit stretched out in his chair, wondering idly if Abraham Kane would actually come to collect the reward for capturing Chuck.


End file.
